Haply never more to hear Sounds unto my childhood dear: Yet if sometimes on my soul Bitter thoughts beyond controul Throw a shade more dark than night, Soon upon the mental sight All seems beautiful and good. D. L. R. LINES TO A LADY, WHO PRESENTED THE AUTHOR WITH SOME ENGLISH FRUITS AND FLOWERS. Green herbs and gushing springs in some hot waste Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls Sweet scenes of home,-the white cot's trellised walls-- The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze I feel as one who from a weary dream Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam Illume the glorious clouds of every hue That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew. How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame And light up all the past! The very same Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old The verdant carpet embroidered with little stars of gold and silver the short-grown, smooth, and close-woven, but most delicate and elastic fresh sward-so soothing to the dazzled eye, so welcome to the wearied limbs-so suggestive of innocent and happy thoughts,-so refreshing to the freed visitor, long pent up in the smoky city-is surely no where to be seen in such exquisite perfection as on the broad meadows and softlyswelling hills of England. And perhaps in no country in the world could pic-nic holiday-makers or playful children with more perfect security of life and health stroll about or rest upon Earth's richly enamelled floor from sunrise to sunset on a summer's day. No Englishman would dare to stretch himself at full length and address himself to sleep upon an Oriental meadow unless he were perfectly indifferent to life itself and could see nothing terrible in the hostility of the deadliest reptiles. When wading through the long grass and thick jungles of Bengal, he is made to acknowledge the full force of the true and beautiful expression-" in the midst of life we are in death.” The British Indian exile on his return home is delighted with the "sweet security" of his native fields. He may then feel with Wordsworth how Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head, And dear the velvet greensward to his tread. Or he may exclaim in the words of poor Keats-now slumbering under a foreign turf Happy is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than her own. It is a pleasing proof of the fine moral influence of natural scenery that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality into almost every human heart. "John Thelwall," says Coleridge, "had something very good about him. We were sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!' Nay, Citizen Samuel,' replied he, it is ' rather a place to make us forget that there is any neccessity for treason!" Leigh Hunt, who always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that diversify an English meadow. RAIN AND SUNSHINE IN MAY. 66 Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek! I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air ; when the winds imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another, panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard. See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the sun how twenty-fold green they are— rich and variegated with gold!" One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm, and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no child an orphan,-whose office is not to spread horror and desolation though shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of nature over a smiling land. But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the flowery retreats of Retired Leisure That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is repre-sented as the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries. "God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of all pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens almost resolves itself into verse. "For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade." For the heath which was the third part of our plot- As much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle, And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set For these are sweet and prosper in the shade. It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the charm. "Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The poet adds that he would not have his garden too much extended. He seems to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look at en masse, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly attended, the little cottagegarden may give him more real delight than belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden 66 we become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet," and even form friendships with individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man, in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It might be worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith or the milliner. The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir Henry Wotten says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, " of the air, because the pre-eminence |